Behind every good work site is good technology. From home
offices to hotel rooms, technology is the wind beneath your
business wings, the premium gasoline in your work tank, the
foundation of your building--you get the idea. Slews of laptops,
wireless solutions, remote software and cell phones await your use.
But with so many options, how do you choose which technologies will
work best to keep your business running smoothly, even if your
workers and offices are separated by many miles?
Often, you're advised to go talk to your peers with growing
businesses who are dealing with similar issues. That's a great
idea, so we talked to some for you. Ephraim Cohen, 34, is co-owner
and partner of The Fortex Group, a communications firm in New York
City. His company has a strong focus on business in Southeast Asia,
and the list of locations his employees work from sounds like
something out of National Geographic. There is a full-time employee
in India, a virtual office in Singapore, three people working part
time out of home offices on the West Coast, and several New York
City office workers who frequently work out of their homes. Cohen
himself falls into this last category.
Fortunately, Cohen saw it coming when he co-founded The Fortex
Group in 2003 and was able to plan the technology to handle the
great distances between workers. "It's better to get good
talent than to worry about them sitting next to you," he says.
"There are a lot of great technology tools to make it easy to
work as a team anywhere in the world." A computer buff at
home, Cohen was a natural choice to choose and set up the
technology for The Fortex Group.
Getting Started
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It sounds basic, but the first step is to figure out what you
need to do with your extended work force. Cohen figured that his
business had two main requirements: Employees needed to talk with
each other on a minute-by-minute basis, and they needed to have
access to files away from the main office. Most growing businesses
with multiple work sites will have those two needs right at the top
of their lists. To add a challenge, these needs have to be met at a
price point that won't strain the budget.
Here's how The Fortex Group handles it. There are no deep
secrets or complex technology installations behind their solution.
Basically, it's about e-mail, telephones and IM. For e-mail,
they went with an outsourced solution from BlueTie. They compared
some less expensive options, but went for the extra features and
high-end security that BlueTie offers. "We don't ever want
to have a problem with e-mail getting out because of low
security," Cohen says. Outsourcing e-mail also makes it easy
to set up new accounts through the web when needed.
The Fortex Group is taking advantage of some of the new
telephone technologies to keep international calling bills down.
They use Skype,
a low-cost internet telephony service that allows calls from
computers to phones. "The cost of talking with our person in
India is nothing," says Cohen. He says the quality is up to
par with traditional phones, and his company has knocked hundreds
of dollars off its monthly communications bill. This is an example
of adapting a consumer-oriented service for business use with
money-saving results. Such a solution may not be right for every
globe-spanning business, but it's worth a look.
Keeping in touch by phone is a no-brainer, but for The Fortex
Group, IM is just as valuable. "It solves the big problem:
When someone is not in the office, how do you feel like they're
next to you?" Cohen says. The entire business is on MSN
Instant Messenger. Sometimes Cohen uses the program Trillian to
communicate with clients over different IM platforms like AOL
Instant Messenger and Yahoo!
The other pressing need was to have access to files while
outside the main office. The Fortex Group decided to go with an
in-house server. The company looked at a $2,000 server with a lot
of bells and whistles, but ultimately went for the cost savings of
a Mirra server
that came in at about $300. That solved the issue of sharing, but,
even better, it also solved the issue of backing up files. Free,
secure web access and file sharing over the internet are part of
the Mirra package.
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